Technological advances in holography, robotics, and 3D printing are starting to realize the vision of a holodeck. These immersive 3D displays must address user safety from the start to be viable. A holodeck's safety challenges are novel because its applications will involve explicit physical interactions between humans and synthesized 3D objects and experiences in real-time. This pioneering paper first proposes research directions for modeling safety in future holodeck applications from traditional physical human-robot interaction modeling. Subsequently, we propose a test-bed to enable safety validation of physical human-robot interaction based on existing augmented reality and virtual simulation technology.

I have fond childhood memories of my dad and me watching Star Trek: Next Generation together. Gene Roddenberry's vision of our collective techno-utopian future captivated my young imagination, and reflecting on it, it's clear that this vision made a deep impression on me that's contributed to my work, my values and ideals. Over the last several decades, we've seen many of Star Treks' fictional technological wonders seemingly jump right out of the television and into our homes. For example, the iPad bears a striking resemblance to the tablet computers used by the Enterprise crew, and 3D printers can materialize objects and even print a nice marbled steak in a way that's reminiscent of Star Trek replicators. And just as I use "Hey Google" to ask my Google Assistants to check my calendar the ship's crew uses "Computer" as a hands-free way to invoke their ship's Assistant.

Science fiction books, movies, games, TV shows and other media have long been home to amazing technology. Many of these ideas can serve as inspiration for today's scientists, but just how close are we to the real-life versions? In this feature, we look at ten of the best examples and rate the chances of their arrival within the next 30 years. As Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons famously put it: "I'd like an hour on the holodeck with Seven of Nine." Futuristic virtual reality experiences appear in many works of fiction, though few are as well-known or fantastic as Star Trek's Holodeck.

In the 1960s, the Star Trek television series brought the vision of artificial intelligence into the living rooms of millions of people. AI was everywhere in the show, in the form of machines that had all the intelligence of humans -- and a lot more. Take, for example, the universal translator on the USS Enterprise. It could translate alien languages into English or any other language instantaneously. That, of course, was all science fiction back in the days when Lyndon B. Johnson was the U.S. president, as were a lot of the other AI applications in use on the starship.

Here you are presented to the release the first public version of a high-fidelity simulator that has been built on the top of Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) called Holodeck, a python package that can be made use for research, classes or even fun! Holodeck is a python package which provides its users with the ability to download pre-built worlds, and also interact with them through a simple, high-level interface. At present, the release comprises of a simple sphere robot, a UAV (quadcopter), an Android, and a navigation agent. It also comes with 6 diverse default worlds. On what principles is Holodeck built in?

OpenAI today updated Gym – its system for training intelligent software – so that developers can teach physical robots to hold pens, pick up and move objects, and so on. Gym was launched in 2016, and is a toolkit for teaching programs new tricks, such as playing Atari games and balancing poles, via reinforcement learning (RL). Now, OpenAI has added a bunch of simulated environments designed to train physical robots how to move and interact with things around them albeit in a virtual world. For example, the simulated environments can be used to teach robotic fingers to play an instrument, or pick and lift an object from the table. This is useful for folks interested in rapidly training intelligent robots over thousands of exercises, without having to rig up a relatively slow-moving physical bot, or before they have a chance to get hold of the hardware.

Nvidia's AI computing platform packs the power of a data centre into a supercomputer the size of a license plate. The race to take bring autonomous vehicles to the road is one currently being driven by the biggest names in tech and manufacturing, with Intel, Tesla, Google, and Ford just some of those already on the AI starting grid. Nvidia has today upped its proposition in the market, announcing what it claims to be is the world's first AI computer for robotaxis. Nvidia's vision for robotaxis, a new class of fully autonomous vehicles, will see cars with no drivers, a steering wheel, pedals or mirrors. Instead it gives passengers better comfort, with interiors designed like a home or office to make passengers feel as comfortable as on a train journey.

Automation seems to be the future, with top tech firms racing to dominate drone delivery by land, sea and air. The world's first unmanned ghost ships could take to the seas by the end of the decade, but they also pose unique problems that will need to be overcome. In an article for The Conversation, Christian Matthews, head of maritime technology at Liverpool John Moores University, explains the challenges ahead. Norway-based Yara has revealed its plans to develop the world's first all-electric and autonomous container ship that is predicted to remove 747 tons (678 tonnes) of carbon dioxide from the air by reducing diesel-powered truck haulage by 40,000 journeys a year Researchers have developed the world's first autonomous, zero-emissions cargo ship, The Yara Birkeland. Developed by agriculture company Yara International ASA and high-technology systems firm Kongsberg Gruppen, will be capable of autonomous mooring and route planning.

When future robots enter the world, they won't have a learning curve. Artificial intelligence researchers are creating tools to help teach the robots that will assemble our gadgets in factories, or do chores around our home, before they ever step (or roll) into the real world. These simulators, most recently announced by Nvidia as a project called Isaac's Lab but also pioneered by Alphabet's DeepMind and Elon Musk's OpenAI, are 3D spaces that have physics just like reality, with virtual objects that act the same way as their physical counterparts. Virtual spaces are required because one way of teaching robots is a method called reinforcement learning, or the chore of doing one task over and over again until it's done correctly. In a simulation, training the bots can be done more quickly and cheaply than in real life because lots of simulated robots can learn at once.

Many of the technological advances predicted in Star Trek's fictional universe have become reality, such as the mobile communicator and hand-held tablet computers. Others, such as tractor beams and warp drives, are still a work in progress. The Holodeck first appeared in The Practical Joker, a 1974 episode of the Star Trek animated series. It was depicted as a recreation room containing a simulated, alternative version of reality. It featured heavily in The Next Generation series and in the 1996 film First Contact.